


The Sea Maid

by metabaron



Category: Original Work
Genre: Cats, F/F, Greenland Shark - Freeform, Nighttime, Selkies, Sharks, ToT: Monster Mash, Witches, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 03:41:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12472672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metabaron/pseuds/metabaron
Summary: She relit the torch easily, but when she held it aloft, she saw a dark, grey shape down the right tunnel. Astrid took a hesitant step forward and peered into the gloom.It was a woman, with sickly grey skin and unnaturally bright eyes. Her hair was dark and stringy, and she wore only a bandeau over her breasts and a long tattered skirt. There was something almost snout-like about her face, and the intensity of her gaze made Astrid catch her breath.





	The Sea Maid

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sath/gifts).



Astrid raised the storm lantern to her face as the lighthouse’s door slammed shut behind her and plunged the room into darkness. She blew on the glass globe and the wick within burst into flames. 

One advantage to being a witch, you never needed to carry matches. 

She lifted the lantern higher and surveyed the large circular room. The light cast strange, dancing shadows on the bare stone walls. Markings on the floor and the walls showed where there had once been furniture, a stove, portraits, signs that this had once been someone's home. All gone now. It had been years since the lighthouse had been abandoned, when the Lucas twins had moved to the city after their patriarch’s sudden and not unwelcome death. 

Astrid had not been the only one to celebrate once they finally left. She was also not the only one who was happy to leave the lighthouse to fall into disrepair. 

It was on the far edge of the town and Astrid had had no reason to be anywhere near it. But a curse on a fishing boat had brought her down to the beach below the cliffs, and she’d felt the tug of something magical coming from the lighthouse. She'd been too preoccupied to look into it at the time, but as soon as she'd cleared everything up, she'd come up to investigate.

Astrid looked around the empty room and frowned. The front door hadn't been locked; anything the twins hadn't sold before they left had been pilfered by looters in the years since.

She circled the room a few times before she headed up the stairs. There was something magic in the lighthouse calling to her, but it wasn't down here.

The next floor up, Astrid set down her lantern by the bannister and looked around.

It might have been a bedroom, once. Moonlight poured in through a narrow window to light the only object remaining in the room, an old, heavy-looking chest.

It reeked of magic.

Astrid lifted her cloak to cover her nose. It also reeked of cat piss.

The leather and brass had faded with age, but in the moonlight the chest looked spectral and unreal. She knelt down in front of it and waved her hand over the lock. 

There was an awful grinding noise that made her teeth ache. Astrid winced. It must have been rusted shut. No wonder the Lucas twins had left it behind. She took a deep breath, adjusted her pointed hat and put her hand back on the lock.

It took her a few more tries, but eventually she was successful and the lock popped open.

When she lifted the lid, the smell was strong enough to make her eyes tear up. 

The chest was empty save for an old, tattered cloak balled up in a corner. It was the source of the magic that had drawn her here.

And the smell.

She got up and shook out the cloak. It was dark grey in the moonlight, and she'd never seen a stranger fabric. It was unwoven and of a piece, like leather, but the texture was rough and pebbly. The fabric felt oily under her fingers. Thankfully, a few days in the sun should be enough to get rid of the cat smell.

She threw the new cloak on over her old one, grabbed her lantern and headed back to town. She'd heard enough stories about the Lucas twins and their family to not want to stay in the lighthouse any longer than necessary.

 

She'd left the new cloak outside on the line to dry for nearly a week, but the smell still lingered. Astrid strongly suspected that her cat Severine had decided that the cloak was a new alternative to her sand box.

Astrid had meant to wait, to bring it to the laundress to see what she could do. But when her cousin Ewan had come to her with stories of a ghost lurking in the caves by the sea, she's grabbed the new cloak instead of her old one.

She'd followed him into the caves, but somehow they'd gotten separated and now Astrid was lost.

Or rather, she'd lost Ewan.

She raised her torch and stared down the branching tunnels ahead of her. If she'd been on her own, it would have been no trouble to find her way out, as a witch can always find her way home, but she needed to find Ewan first. And then take care of the ghost he'd spoken of.

Astrid exhaled in a huff… and her torch went out.

She cursed loudly and it echoed down the passageways. Wherever Ewan was, she hoped he heard her.

She relit the torch easily, but when she held it aloft, she saw a dark, grey shape down the right tunnel. Astrid took a hesitant step forward and peered into the gloom.

It was a woman, with sickly grey skin and unnaturally bright eyes. Her hair was dark and stringy, and she wore only a bandeau over her breasts and a long tattered skirt. There was something almost snout-like about her face, and the intensity of her gaze made Astrid catch her breath.

Was this the ghost Ewan had seen?

There'd been stories, hundreds of years old, that the man who'd lived in the lighthouse before the Lucases had taken a strange, foreign bride as his second wife, and when they'd died her restless spirit haunted the town, forever trapped here and unable to return to her faraway homeland.

Astrid stepped towards the woman, but the torchlight didn't seem to penetrate the dark shadows surrounding her. 

"You're not a ghost," Astrid whispered. She took another step forward. "Let me help--"

Behind her, she heard Ewan scream her name. She whipped her head around, and when she looked back, the woman was gone.

She shook her head, and turned to run in the direction of the screams.

 

Hours later, the ghost safely dispelled, she and Ewan walked back along the beach to town. The sun was just peeking over the edge of the horizon when she asked him about the stranger she'd seen in the caves.

"That's the Skalugsuak maid!" Ewan exclaimed.

"The who?" Astrid asked.

"She was married to the man who had owned the lighthouse before--"

"I've heard the stories too. Foreign girl, second wife. Didn't she die when he did?"

"Oh no, she's not foreign. I heard," Ewan began, face lighting up with excitement, "that she was a selkie, that her husband stole her skin and burned it so she could never leave him. But she's a Skalugsuak and not a seal, so she outlived him. She's probably going to outlive everyone in town too."

"And she just… lives in the caves, like a hermit. Well, no wonder. With the dark and the damp it's probably the closest you can get to being at the bottom of the ocean without actually being under water." Astrid shuddered at the thought. "I can't imagine there's much in there for her to eat."

"People used to leave offerings, by the caves. So she didn't eat their horses. I don't know if anyone still does."

Astrid stopped walking. "She… eats horses?"

"Whole! And bears. And once, I heard, she chased down a moose. But no one has seen her outside of the caves for decades. Animals still have gone missing, but no one knew for sure if it was her. Lots of folks--Nan included--just assumed she was dead. You should feel special, Astrid, maybe she likes witches!"

Astrid rolled her eyes. "No one likes witches, Ewan, we meddle too much."

"You probably shouldn't meddle with the Skalugsuak maid. She's still a selkie after all, and they're dangerous."

Astrid only made a disapproving noise in her throat. 

 

She didn't see the Skalugsuak maid again for a few days.

The new cloak still stunk, so she banned Severine from the house and resorted to lighting scented candles to get rid of the smell.

She took the cloak with her when she went to harvest some herbs during the full moon.

Astrid was trudging back through a vacant field when she realised it had grown darker as she'd been walking. It couldn't be rain, they weren't due for a storm for another week.

She raised the brim of her pointed hat to glance up at the sky. And did a double take.

Astrid stared up. 

The stars were gone.

The moon was barely visible, faded to a pale smear on the utter blackness of the night sky. It was as if the light itself had been dimmed.

There was a rustle in the grasses to her left, and Astrid swung her head around. Her breath lodged in her throat like a fishbone. A woman's dark silhouette loomed over her. She was nearly seven feet tall, and the bright swirling lights in her eyes snared Astrid as well as any net. It was as if she brought the darkness from the depths of the sea with her, like a miasma. 

Astrid was frozen in place as the stranger approached.

She recognised the Skalugsuak maid from their encounter in the tunnels. She seemed much bigger this close. The tip of Astrid's hat would just about reach her nose.

Those bright eyes locked with hers, and Astrid felt suddenly bare, as if the Skalugsuak maid could see straight through her.

There was a strange beauty to her, and a strength. The Skalugsuak maid looked like she could tear a forest asunder in pursuit of her quarry. Astrid fully believed Ewan's story about the bears.

Astrid also wondered what the Skalugsuak maid's arms would feel like under her hands. What it would feel like to have the Skalugsuak maid's hands on her.

She drew her cloak tighter around her body and took a step forward. The cloak's smell was stronger somehow. It was overwhelmingly powerful. Her nose burned. Her eyes watered.

The Skalugsuak maid's gaze travelled slowly up to the point of Astrid's hat and then just as slowly down to her well-worn work boots. Her gaze lingered for a moment on Astrid's green hair that marked her as a witch.

"Hm," the Skalugsuak maid began. Astrid could see the flash of her razor-sharp teeth as she spoke. "You're the witch?" Her voice was like a glacier grinding against stone. It sent a shiver through Astrid.

"Yes," Astrid replied, finally.

Astrid was silent for a long moment before the Skalugsuak maid nodded to herself, took a step back, and walked back to the woods.

Astrid couldn't bring herself to move again until the moon had returned to its full brightness and she could no longer see that tall grey shape through the trees.

She ran back into town as if the devil herself was on her heels.

 

Severine greeted her with a hoarse chirp when she returned to her small flat above the tea shop.

Astrid picked up the cat and ran her fingers through Severine's long black fur. "How did you get back inside, silly girl?"

She hung her cloak on a hook by the door and carried Severine on one shoulder over to the kitchen nook. The kettle was already on the hob, so she pulled down the makings for tea and set the water to boil.

She put Severine on the table and sat down so she was at eye level. Severine head-butted her and Astrid absently scratched her ruff. "Oh sweet girl, I have a problem." She sighed and rubbed her face. "Nan would have known what to do.

"If Ewan is right, if she hasn't been out of the caves in decades then something caused her to leave.

"But nothing's happened in the caves that I've heard of." And the ghost she and Ewan dispatched wouldn't be enough to drive out a selkie.

"So she left for a reason. She wants something, but I don't know what it is.

"No one has seen her for decades, and yet all of a sudden, I run into her twice in the span of a week.

She stared up at the ceiling for a long moment, and then her gaze fell upon the strange cloak she'd found in the old lighthouse.

The lighthouse where the Skalugsuak maid had once lived, centuries ago.

Astrid bolted to her feet. "Oh no," she said, "oh no. Her husband never burned it at all, he just hid it away from her and spread the lie to keep her in his thrall."

She glanced down at Severine, who had flopped onto the table and was staring up at her expectantly. Astrid leveled a finger at the cloak. "That's the selkie's skin, Severine! She's been following me because I have her skin!"

She dashed across the room to yank the skin off the wall hook and spun around the room with it. She only stopped to kiss Severine on the head. "Thank you, beautiful girl, I never would have solved this without you."

Astrid glanced out the window. It was almost dawn, but she wanted to get the Skalugsuak maid her skin back tonight.

She grabbed her own cloak off the hook and dashed out the door.

 

She stood on the beach just outside of town and waited for the sun to come up.

Astrid held the cloak--the selkie's skin--against her chest as she stared out to sea. She hoped she was right, that the Skalugsuak maid would feel the tug of her own skin and come to the beach.

"Oh!" she said softly. She heard footfalls in the sand approaching from the west.

The Skalugsuak maid emerged from the fog, surrounded by darkness.

Astrid surged forward, holding the skin out. "This is yours. Isn't it?"

The Skalugsuak maid's strange glowing eyes widened, the points of light within them spinning faster. "Yes," she rumbled, and took the cloak from Astrid's hands. "Yes. Thank you."

Astrid wiped at the dampness on her face. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry it took us so long, that you were trapped here on land, away from your people--"

The Skalugsuak maid cupped her hand on Astrid's face. Her palm dwarfed Astrid's head.

"Little witch," she said. "I thought you looked familiar, when I first saw you in the caves. Before my skin was taken, I knew your grandmother."

Great-grandmother, at the very least, Astrid amended. How many generations back had it been?

"You look just like her," the Skalugsuak maid continued.

"Oh," Astrid said.

Before she could finish that though, the Skalugsuak maid bent down and kissed her, very carefully, on the mouth.

"Oh," Astrid said again, after they broke apart. She stumbled but the Skalugsuak maid caught her in her strong embrace.

"You do her proud." And she kissed Astrid again.

Astrid craned her neck and stood on the very tips of her toes. She could feel the press of the Skalugsuak maid's fangs against her lips, she didn't dare kiss her too deeply.

The Skalugsuak maid smelt even stronger than her skin, but Astrid didn't mind it as much anymore. It was making her dizzy, but in a good way.

They broke apart as the sun crested the horizon.

The selkie gave Astrid a final look, the lights in her eyes spinning furiously, before she walked out into the water.

Astrid watched as she drew on her skin matter-of-factly and disappeared below the surface of the water without a splash.

The Skalugsuak's dorsal fin was visible for a few moments as it darted out to sea, and then vanished.

Astrid stayed on the beach for a long while, watching the water.


End file.
